Last Picnic On The Beach

August 18, 1985|By Sandra Lake Miller

It is altogether possible to lose one's innocence more than once. Spiritual innocence is a kind of virginity of the soul, a belief that man is innately good, that evil can be sucked up by kind acts. It is the innocence of young children, of Anne Frank, of storybook heroines. My innocence was lost twice in a single day when I saw someone kill for the uncontrollable joy of it.

Daytona Beach, in 1962, was the antithesis of the nearby sleepy town where our small, conservative university was located. The seaside was for semi-grownups, a collegiate lotus-land of booze, sex and automobiles.

Charlie and I double-dated often with a fraternity brother and his steady girl, whose name was Stormy. She was fierce though tiny, a feisty, 90-pound scrapper. She had to be tough to put up with her man. J.T. was 6-foot-4, with a blond crew cut and pale eyes, cold and hard as glass. He could be witty and he could be cruel. J.T. was from Palm Beach. He bragged that he had Seminole Indian blood, and he would monopolize bonfire gatherings with his tales of hunting in the Everglades, 'gator wrestling, the whole bit. We didn't really believe the Indian-kinship braggadocio. In truth, J.T. looked more like a Nazi in chinos, but no one called him a liar to his face. He was big enough and mean enough to make us feign belief.

Nevertheless, J.T. had a car and a cooler and a ready wit. We would have doubled with Attila the Hun to get off campus and out of town for an afternoon. To the dunes! Sea oats and sunsuits and cold fried chicken! Way, way down to the southern end of Daytona, almost to land's end, beyond where motels and Deans of Men could corrupt, to a beach now glutted with condominiums. The guys split a couple of six-packs. The girls stuck to the sophisticated coed's friend, ''purple passion,'' an obnoxious but affordable combination of vodka and Welch's grape juice.

Stormy and I lazed away this particular afternoon on our beach towels, made small adjustments to our tropical tans and watched the guys toss a football. J.T. was mixing passes with hunting anecdotes and other tall tales of the dismal swamp. There was a hypnotic unreality about the day, the sun, the vodka, the isolation.

I was close to drowsing. I heard J.T. mention something about showing his shotgun to Charlie, and I vaguely sensed their shadows passing between me and the sun as they walked to the trunk of the car. I remember watching the terns on the edge of the water, at that magic bond the incoming tide makes with the sand, licking with a salty tongue. The terns danced like dream creatures, dipping their slender beaks, preening, twirling in a feathery ballet, peace, peace, world without worry . . .

The sound was at first beyond comprehension, alien, vulgar, so pornographic in that setting. That is indeed the word for what I saw: A lovely, dancing tern melted into a puddle of raspberry gore, framed with feathers, on the edge of the tide. It had not had time to scream.

But I screamed, and my cry was muffled by the second shot that J.T. fired at another tern, taking flight. ''No! No!'' I shouted, and I ran, running away, not looking back, hands covering my ears against the sound, fleeing the beach, not caring where I went. I was running down the road when Charlie caught up and grabbed my arm.

''Murderers! Murderers! Let me go!'' I raged into the face of my someday- to-be-husband, whose eyes held the same tears as my own.

''Sandy,'' he said, so softly. ''I didn't know he was going to shoot, I swear I didn't.'' He held me and I cried until my sides ached, my nose ran and tears trickled down my face, fell from my chin and mixed with the sweat that had collected in my halter top.

When we walked slowly back to the car, J.T. was waiting with a crooked grin. ''Sorry about that. It's that ol' Indian blood at work. I can't help myself, I get the urge to kill.''

Now I understood bloodlust. I wanted to tear his smug face apart with my fingernails. ''Shut up,'' I said. Sorrow, not fear, made my voice quaver. ''You're a fake. I hate you. Take us home.'' I wasn't afraid of J.T. anymore. He was the smallest man I knew.

Stormy quickly gathered up the picnic things, and we rode back to town in silence. Charlie and I stared out of opposite windows, avoiding each other's eyes, as if we were the guilty ones. Stormy sat, head bowed, hands carefully folded, like a child being punished.

I never spoke to J.T. or to Stormy again. I never talked to Charlie about it. I never wrote about it until now, 20 years later. Nothing has ever shocked me as much since, not John F. Kennedy's murder, not the Vietnam War, not napalmed children.

After the last picnic, I knew that anything evil can happen. And, given enough time, probably will.